Kirsten Backstrom

As I get closer to the water, I feel more and more at home…

Kirsten Backstrom, founder and director of Compass Dreamwork, is certified as a Dream Work Facilitator through the Marin Institute for Projective Dream Work (MIPD, Jeremy Taylor). She is a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD), and has been a student of dreams (her own and others’) for over thirty-five years. She is also an interfaith spiritual director, a writer, and a teacher and facilitator of workshops, groups and classes. She has a background in pastoral services and hospice chaplaincy, eldercare and bereavement care, both professionally and as a volunteer. She is an active member of her Quaker community (Multnomah Friends Meeting in Portland, Oregon), where her ministry to work with “threshold experiences” (including dreams, but also illness, grief, change, aging, and dying) is acknowledged and supported.

Kirsten has an extensive background in the study of world religions and cultures, and in the dreaming practices associated with diverse spiritual traditions. Her approach to dreamwork has been particularly influenced by her exploration of the precepts and practices of Vajrayana Buddhism.

Through a personal experience of cancer and the long-term, life-changing health challenges that came with it, Kirsten’s dreams have been a true compass. The big questions of life and death that dreams raise have always intrigued her: Who are we? What happens when we die? What is our place in this multi-faceted world? What interconnectedness lies beyond our apparent separateness? What gives our lives meaning? These are foundational questions underlying much of her dreamwork.

In photos, I am myself and not myself…

Perhaps a person’s dreaming makes a better biography than her life story, since dreams are being rather than doing. So, here’s a dream.

Dream of the Hourglass:I am with a small group being led through a big, rambling house as part of a spiritual journey of awakening. We’re told that everything we encounter from here on will be meaningful. At first, the experience seems ordinary or even boring, like being toured through a dull museum. But then I realize I’m holding something in my hands: two clear glass globes (one in each hand) connected by a thin hollow stem—an hourglass. I examine the hourglass closely. It contains both water and tiny sand grains that are clear, cube-shaped crystals, like coarse salt. Instead of turning it vertically, I continue to hold it horizontally. The globes come apart and become bubbles that float out of my hands. The bubbles burst and spill a glittering rain/snow of water droplets and crystals. Each crystal grows to become another bubble, and these, too, burst and sprinkle more crystals that are the seeds for new bubbles, and so on. I consider the significance of an hourglass and its relationship to time, and think about bubbles and their association with transience, and decide that this dream is telling me something about eternity. I am surrounded by shimmering, hovering, glorious bubbles. I am a shimmering bubble myself, preparing to burst into new forms.

Kirsten Backstrom

Click on the photo for Kirsten’s bio

Dream Blog Categories

Dream Blog Categories

Blog Post Archives

Blog Post Archives

“In my view, dreams are much more accurately described as experiences—that is, conscious events one has personally encountered.... We live through our dreams as much as our waking lives.”
-Stephen LaBerge

Search Compass Dreamwork

Search for:

“Perhaps, in the end, there are no dreams intrinsically more healing than those that demonstrate that our separation is an illusion; that we are part of a living web that extends beyond our own skin and skull.”
-Marc Ian Barasch